anthroplogical introduction to youtube

(to watch this larger or in full screen, go here.)

OURTUBE

A few weeks ago a friend sent me a link to a one-hour video posted on YouTube by the cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch and his class at Kansas State University. “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube” is exactly what it says it is, and, of course, it itself is also a YouTube phenomenon that looks at other YouTube phenomena and back at itself. It’s essentially a PowerPoint lecture turned into a film. I don’t think I’ve ever watched anything on YouTube that was longer than five minutes before — it helps that there is the option of viewing a high-res version, so the typical blurry, smeared YouTube universe can be slightly sharper and easier on the eyes.

This video looks at how this phenomenon has changed the way we view things, what we view and how we are simultaneously becoming more isolated and forming communities. The class discovers that a whole value system has emerged based on viewing material online. As some values diminish among viewers, others become more important. Authenticity, for example, is prized — if there is a hint that a posting is “fake,” staged, sponsored or has a hidden agenda, the viewing community recoils in disgust. And, as the physical isolation of viewers increases, more virtual communities sprout up.

The very act of viewing is sometimes a group experience in a very different way than going to a cinema or watching cable TV. More than once, I’ve been part of a home dinner group that morphed into a YouTube viewing session as a laptop is passed around the table and people call up amazing clips they’ve seen. What a weird form of watching videos that is! Of course one would never, in that situation, recommend anything longer than a few minutes, but the cumulative viewing time might add up to an hour or more.

I’m on a music tour now, and I am told that almost every show we do gets posted later that same night or the next day — well, random bits of it. We can watch our progress on YouTube in shaky, fuzzy fragments. One poster apparently had very little memory on his camera or cellphone, because his posting was limited to a couple of seconds. Blink and you missed it. Why did he even post it? Why bother? The answer might be hinted at in the anthropological film: here is film, or video, as a kind of social glue — a network of shout outs, visual riffs and threads that sometimes seem like desperate calls for attention but are also, just as often, incredibly creative.

DAVID BYRNE (musician)
(from NYT)